detaching great forces from both the Western and the Russian fronts. When disaster first began to manifest itself, there arose from Rumania itself a cry of treachery, an accusation of broken promises. These charges seemed to be substantiated when, later, the domestic situation in Russia was revealed. Stürmer was at the time Russian Premier, and of his treachery there is hardly a doubt. It was, and still is, believed that he had a secret agreement with Germany whereby a Rumanian defeat, rather than a Russian defeat, was to be the pretext for a separate peace. The campaign plans of the Rumanian General Staff seemed on every critical occasion to be completely known to the enemy. Stanley Washburn, the correspondent of the London Times on the Eastern Front, who was present at Rumanian headquarters during the retreat, while admitting the treachery of the Russian Premier and the "dark forces" within the Russian Court, places the chief blame on the bad judgment of the Allied chiefs, rather than on bad faith. A PLAUSIBLE DISASTER. EXPLANATION OF THE "The greatest mistake," he said, "on the part of the Allies was their estimate of the number of troops that the Germans could send to Rumania during the fall of 1916. As I have said, experts placed this number at from ten to sixteen divisions, but, to the best of my judgment, they sent, between September 1 and January 1, not less than thirty. The German commitments. to the Rumanian front came by express, and the Russian supports, because of the paucity of lines of communication, came by freight. The moment it became evident what the Germans could do in the way of sending troops, Rumania was doomed." On the other hand, Gogu Negulescu, a senator of the Rumanian Parliament, who visited the United States after the war, attributes the defeat entirely to the treachery of the whole Russian Government. He declares that Russia was from the beginning averse to calling in Rumania to help win the General Zottu was chief of the Rumanian General Staff in 1916. His deputy-chief was General Iliescu, who formerly had been Secretary of the War Office. had rejected Rumanian terms as exorbitant. Finally, in the summer of 1916, perhaps having knowledge of the vast forces which Germany was drawing from her reserves for a tremendous blow against the Russians on the Eastern Front, Petrograd came terms with Rumania. Had the armies which smashed Rumania struck Russia alone, undoubtedly her forces would have crumpled under the impact. Russia would have been forced to a separate peace, the Teuton armies on the Eastern Front would have been liberated for service on the Western Front-with results that need only be imagined. The service Rumania rendered the Allied cause was none the less because she suffered so disastrously. The War in the Near East THE TURKS TAKE KUT-EL-AMARA, BUT THE Supporters of the theory that the war had to be won upon the Western Front, who characterized the campaigns in the Balkans, in Armenia, in Mesopotamia, and in Egypt as "sideshows" irrelevant to the main struggle ignored two important facts. The first was the value of Turkey to the Central Alliance. If Turkey were not attacked in her spheres of influence, they would serve as important reserves of men and material to supplement the Austro-German armies. Secondly, these critics of "side-shows" ignored one of the great causes of the war: Germany's intention to build up an empire of the Levantine countriesa project which not only menaced British rule in India, and Egypt, and Russia's expansion into a warmer sea, but threatened every other power in Europe outside of the Teutonic Alliance. achieved their end in the downfall of the Turk. During the autumn of 1915 the pressure of the Gallipoli expedition was felt in Armenia and the Caucasus, and when it was abandoned the force in Mesopotamia took up the task of relieving the Russians in the Caucasus. When this in turn got into difficulties and was surrounded by the Turks in Kut, rôles were reversed. Russia, with her strength mobilized for the first time upon the Asiatic front under a brilliant commander, the Grand-Duke Nicholas, was able to assume the offensive in an effort to relieve some of the pressure upon the British on the Tigris. She succeeded in her tasknot indeed in time to save Kut-but so that the British preparations for a second advance upon Bagdad went forward all through the summer and were complete by the end of the year. haste. At Marseilles the departure had been so hurried that bombs, rifle grenades, range finders, Verey lights and periscopic rifles had been left in France, and there was from the first a shortage of telephone wire. Sir John Nixon had been forced to resign the chief command on account of ill-health, and his place was taken by LieutenantGeneral Sir Percy Lake, Chief of the Indian Staff. It must be remembered that General Aylmer had been told that Kut must be relieved within eight days and that January 15, 1916, was the last day Townshend could hold out. Therefore the Corps Commander gave orders for an advance to be made on the fifth against the first Turkish position. The Third Division was already on the river and if Aylmer could have waited ten days, he would have doubled his striking power. THE TURKISH LINES BEFORE KUT SKILLFULLY DRAWN. The Turks had drawn their lines before Kut with considerable ingenuity and strength. Three natural features of the country, the Tigris, the marshes. and the flat bare expanse devoid of all cover, determined their character. In general the positions were made on both banks of the river, drawn so as to rest the flanks on marsh or tributary wadi (ravine). In addition to the first lines the enemy had prepared trenches in échelon which extended far back and rendered-even where the marsh did not-turning movements impossible. Attack then must be delivered frontally and in the open. A reference to the map will show the position of the enemy lines. The first, Sheik Saad, on both sides of the Tigris with its main force on the left, had trenches at right angles to protect its flanks. Against this position Aylmer chose to divide his forces in proportion to those opposed and make a concentrated attack on both banks at the same time. January 6, the columns on both sides came into touch with the enemy, General Kemball's force attacking on the right and General Rice's on the left or north bank. On the seventh amid intense heat the attack was renewed. Kemball had been successful on the right and the Turks feared lest he might turn their flank. The engagements (as in those that followed) were frontal infantry attacks made over open ground under heavy fire against deep and narrow trenches, which had been constructed by adepts in the art, and which further were untouched by artillery fire, for owing to the mirage the artillery did not find the enemy trenches. Instead of a quick rush measured by seconds, the infantry came under rifle. fire at 2000 yards, and it was a woefully thin line before its members even saw the head of a Turk. January 9, the enemy fearing for his flanks, fell back on a second position at Orah where on his left he had the protection of the wadi descending from the Pushtikuh Hills. The seven miles' advance was dearly bought for the British lost 4,262 officers and men, a casualty list equal to one half of the garrison they were relieving. HE BREAKDOWN OF THE MEDICAL DE THE BREANT WEPLORABLE. The tragic memory of the wounded. will forever mark the day. The official Eyewitness with the Relieving Force writes: "Never since the Crimean War can there have been such a collection of maimed and untended humanity in a British camp as were gathered on the Tigris banks on the night of January 7. After fifteen months of the war there was not a hospital ship or barge upon the river. Doctors, ambulances, medical equipment, vital to the scene, were following the Force in leisurely transports from France. The five field ambulances of the 7th Division were on the high seas. While our casualties in the battle were over 4,000 there was barely provision for 250 beds-all was chaos. Three doctors and a hospital assistant! At five o'clock two tents had been put up and the wounded still poured in. More than a thousand came to the ambulance alone before 10 o'clock and they lay like bales in the dark and cold with nobody to tend them. . . . One lent what aid one could but there were neither wraps nor food nor warm drink. . . . Stretchers ran short-there was one to fifty wounded. Shattered limbs were TROOPS FROM INDIA AT THE MOHAMMEDAN HOUR OF PRAYER Instead of responding to the Sultan's call to a Holy War, the Mohammedan races of India, for the most part, adhered loyally to their British leaders. In the picture the long row of be-turbanned Moslem soldiers, kneeling on their prayer rugs and with faces turned toward Mecca, are in the attitude of prayer. Picture, Henry Ruschin BRITISH MONITOR IN ACTION AGAINST THE TURKS ON THE TIGRIS The vessel which can be adapted to all the vagaries of the Tigris is hard to find. From the end of March to the beginning of July there is flood water, and a steamer has to make head against a 5-knot current. Then in the late summer and autumn the channel is only 5 feet deep. The channel is constantly changing and sharp twists and turns complicate navigation already difficult enough. laid on the jolting transport carts; many must have died in them who might have been saved. The next day it rained, and still the wounded were gathered in. Hunger and weakness and delay in treatment caused many of the wounds to become septic and gangrene set in. Less serious cases were carried the relieving force devoted itself to sapping up to the El Hanna position. News came through that Townshend had found fresh supplies and could hold out until March, and so further advance waited for the arrival of reinforcements. SUCCESS OR FAILURE DEPENDENT on to the boats, laid in rows on the THE SUN TRANSPORTATION. decks with little shelter from the rain and shipped downstream to the already congested hospital at Amara. Meanwhile the relieving force had pushed on against the second Turkish position at Orah. Here it was hoped by crossing the wadi high up beyond the Turkish left, the force could make a wide encircling movement and reach the Suwaicha Marsh between which and the Tigris lay only a gap of a mile. If the gap could be held then 15,000 Turks would be cut off. But the plan failed. Maps were inaccurate, the rains had begun and under a cold. driving wind churned up the mud; the détour described was not wide enough, and the transport in crossing the wadi was delayed by the steep high banks. Though the Turks fell back from Orah it was they who held the gap, and in the strongly-entrenched position of Umm-el-Hanna presented yet another obstacle to the relief of the beleaguered garrison. Meanwhile the expedition had more heavy casualties to pay for the frontal attack. The next three lines of the enemy forbade outflanking for their positions were supported on the left by the great Suwaicha Marsh and on the right by the Tigris. It was believed that Townshend could not possibly hold out much longer, and so, January 21, the relieving force pushed on to another futile tragic attempt in the open under heavy fire against the Umm-El-Hanna lines. Some of the troops got into the front trenches but the supports were late in coming up, and those that were left were driven out again. That night the scandal of Sheikh Saad and the wadi was repeated, and the misery of the wounded aggravated still further by the rain and cold. Then the rains precluded further movement and for over a fortnight The whole question, both of the advance to Bagdad and of the relief of Kut, hinged upon transportation. For sure and deliberate progress a railway was essential; without it so many ships and so many tugs and barges and mahailas were needed. Yet the carrying capacity of the Tigris fleet at the time of the British advance was not equal to that of a single line of railway with an average supply of rolling stock. To supplement the paddle-steamers, mahailas, bellums, and gufars of the Tigris, the most heterogenous collection of river traffic was gathered in from the inland waters of India. Of these, the Aërial, half-houseboat half-aeroplane, with a hull from the Brahmaputra and fitted with an air-propeller and a 50-horse-power Diesel engine which made more noise than a minor battle was a type, and became the officially recognized hospital ferry plying between field ambulances and hospital camp. Land transport had not quite the same variety: the first and second lines were served by packmules, the Army transport carts were drawn by mules and horses, and the heavy guns served by camels and a bullock train. On the night of March 7, another attempt to reach Kut was made. Townshend sent word that he still could last, but the Staff feared that a week was all they could count upon before being inundated by floods. The enemy's strongest position was the Es Sinn line stretching between Tigris and Shatt-el-Hai, some eight miles only from Kut. In the centre the Dujaila redoubt formed the point of a salient, and it was decided to attempt to outflank the Turk by forcing in the sides of this redoubt. To achieve success, the element of surprise was essential; by thorough organization of |